FACES AND PLACES: What's with the religious right? (03/19/00)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

What's with the religious right?

When presidential candidate John McCain opened fire on the religious right by comparing Christian conservative Pat Robertson and others to Al Sharpton and his gang of race hustlers, he was adopting the modus operandi of the secular left.

Attacks on Judeo-Christian believers who condemn abortion, out-of-wedlock births, child abandonment, drug use, family collapse and other symptoms of social pathology in American life always surface around election time.

Accustomed to the gradual and insidious cultural infiltration of their "vision" of how Americans should think and act, America's self-appointed, self-anointed "guardians" were outraged when religious conservatives began to fight back at the ballot box. Such action suddenly became a threat to the separation of Church and state proviso in the Constitution.

The secular left is "tolerant" of religious views as long as they are not translated into the kind of political action that helps elect conservatives, especially Republican conservatives. Putting on their "we care" hat, they have consistently cautioned Republicans to be wary lest the religious right "hijacks" the party, forcing it to become "intolerant" and "exclusionary."

In 1994, for example, one columnist for The Wall Street Journal characterized the religious right as a "GOP albatross." Jesse Jackson offered his two cents by likening the Christian Coalition to Hitler's Nazis. Fortunately, no one listened, and a few months later the Republican Party went on to win big. "Of the 52 House seats [that] Republicans picked up on November 8, 1994," writes Don Feder in his book "Who's Afraid of the Religious Right?" "38 went to traditional-values candidates who welcomed the support of Christian conservatives, as did nine of the 11 freshman Republican senators elected that year."

The most artful put-down of Christian conservatives can be found in "The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism in America," a 1994 book published by the Anti-Defamation League that went after Pat Robertson and the 700 Club, Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition, Phyllis Schlafly and the Eagle Forum, Gary Bauer and his Family Research Council, James Dobson and Focus on the Family, as well as other Christian groups. Either directly or more subtly, the ADL intimated that all of them were part of a vast anti-Semitic conspiracy aimed at establishing an exclusionary Christian America.

Not all Jews subscribed to this nonsense. Seventy-five Jewish intellectuals and activists signed an ad in The New York Times on August 2, 1994, condemning the ADL. After reading the publication, columnist Mona Charen wrote: "The Anti-Defamation League has committed defamation ... The ADL report contains no footnotes or supporting materials but is littered with characterizations like 'prophets of rage,' 'paranoia' and 'hysteria,' words that suit the report itself perfectly. The definition of anti-Semitism it applies is so broad as to be meaningless ... Finally, alas, there is the crude but undeniable fact that the ADL is in the anti-Semitism business. The more it finds, the greater its prominence and the easier it is to raise money. It is playing upon the ancient fears of and worries of American Jews - and is doing so dishonestly, with quotes taken out of context and flagrantly false accusation."

Mr. Feder called the report an attempted political assassination and defended religious conservatives in his book "Who's Afraid of the Religious Right?" The United States was founded by believers, he wrote. "Of the 55 men who met in Philadelphia in 1787 to draft the Constitution, 52 were orthodox Christians."

Quoting James Madison's statement to "keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries," the ADL report suggested that the religious right might soon destroy America's socio-religious fabric by resurrecting old hatreds. Given the ADL's consistent and unremitting portrayal of Ukrainians as centuries-long anti-Semites, this statement is extraordinarily disingenuous.

Ukrainians are painfully aware the defamatory tactics of the Anti-Defamation League. It was the ADL that produced that infamous videotape of John Demjanjuk's hearing in Cleveland insinuating, without offering any conclusive proof, that he was a war criminal, and that Ukrainians who supported him were anti-Semites. The video was distributed to hundreds of schools throughout America.

"Two and a half centuries after Diderot's famous pronouncement 'Let us strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest,' religion is alive and well," writes Gertrude Himmelfarb in her book "One Nation, Two Cultures: A Searching Examination of American Society in the Aftermath of Our Cultural Revolution," adding, "This is what disturbs many liberals and secularists." The United States remains the most religious nation in the industrialized world. Forty-three percent of us worship once a week in a church or synagogue. Seventy-three percent believe God is the all-powerful creator of the universe. A constitutional amendment to permit non-denominational school prayer is favored by 69 percent.

Realizing it can't ever win in the ballot box, the secular left ambushes us through the judicial and legislative process. Local ordinances requiring condom distribution in schools legitimize promiscuity. The welfare system legitimizes out-of-wedlock births. No-fault divorce legitimizes breaking material vows.

As the election season heats up, count on the "anointed" to continue their secular jihad by accusing the religious right of being exclusionary, extremist, insensitive, intolerant, homophobic, hateful and of other assorted social "sins." In the forefront of the offensive will be the ADL, the ACLU, Americans for the Separation of Church and State, People for the American Way, Project Tocsin and sundry other elitist societies eager for their "vision" to prevail.

Through it all it would be good to remember these words of Newt Gingrich: "You cannot maintain a civilization with 12-year-olds having babies, 15-year-olds killing each other, 17-year-olds dying of AIDs, and 18-year-olds getting diplomas they can't read: It is impossible."

Let the debate begin!

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: mbkuropas@compuserve.com

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